Migrating content/SEO from custom CMS

  • sasocreative

    (@sasocreative)


    10 years, 6 months ago

    I am building a new site for an online film magazine. The existing site is built in (from what I can tell) a custom CMS (notionally called Pressroom, but I can’t find any information on it). The client has lost touch with the original developer.

    There’s a lot of content and corresponding SEO goodwill inherent in the current site. The client ideally wants to transfer all of that content and SEO to the new site (in WordPress, of course).

    Anyone have any ideas on how I might go about importing the existing content into WordPress. I could get access (I think) to the actual database, but I’m no php/sql expert. From what I can see, the existing CMS doesn’t have an export feature.

    Just to be clear, the new WordPress site will be on the same server and domain.

    Is what the client asking for possible (on, it must be said, a fairly meagre budget) of do I need a different strategy?

    Any suggestions appereciated.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Marios Alexandrou

    (@marios-alexandrou)

    10 years, 6 months ago

    This may be obvious, but how about copying and pasting the articles into WordPress? If we’re talking about low hundreds you could enlist the help of some low cost labor and then use your time to QA.

    As for maintaining the “SEO” your best bet is to ensure that the URLs don’t change at all. If there are extensions on the current URLs e.g. .php or .htm then you need to replicate those too. WordPress allows you to extensions to posts, but if you use pages you’ll need a plugin like Add Any Extension to Pages.

    Thread Starter sasocreative

    (@sasocreative)

    10 years, 6 months ago

    Thanks Marios, I thought about a manual transfer, but I thinks there’s literally thousands of posts. I could probably do the best-ranked 100 or so manually, but I don’t think it’s realistic for the whole site.

    Hadn’t thought about low-cost labour. Never even tried them. You mean like Freelancer.com or something like that? Certainly worth thinking about. thanks.

    catacaustic

    (@catacaustic)

    10 years, 6 months ago

    If you’re not too bad at PHP, it’s not that hard to write a basic import script as well. I’d do that from within WordPress itself, and use the WordPress functions to set up the posts correctly.

    The other big thing is to remember to set up 301 redirects for any URL’s that change when you migrate the site. While google will catch up it iwll take a little while.

    The one thing to remember is that no matter what, any move like that will result in a short-term rankings loss – but it will come back if you keep things in a decent order.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

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